What a memory you've got, Ron.

That was March 1, 1969, the day Shifty was killed. God damn it.

We left Pleiku very early, I had that new gunner, we lined up on the runway at Polei Kleng and he told me his M-60 barrel was gone when we arrived, he didn't know where it was or what had happened to it. I got lucky early, a line of tanks or APCs came by and I gave one of them everything I had (maybe a case of LRRPs, even) for a brand-new barrel for the kid.

Right after that was taken care of, the recoiless rifle started on us from the hills at the west end of the runway. We were all laying in the scrub brush off to the side of the runway, sidearms only, waiting for the ground attack. The ricky rifle rounds were coming in maybe two a minute, there was no cover, Dana was with us on his back in an old slit trench. Between rounds, Dana would arch up and dig out underneath himself with his hand, trash, toilet paper, etc, then just before the next round hit he'd settle back into the trench. I'm flat on my face watching this and finally say to him, "Dana, that's a slit trench." He says, "I don't give a s---, it's a hole, isn't it?" I couldn't argue with him.

We had been caught by incoming, shut down again somewhere a few days before, so BonBon was careful to set all the start switches so all he had to do was hit the main to get things cranking. We timed a few rounds, said, okay, next one, we're outta here. I don't know why I remember we were 3rd in line. We went out sideways, one other ship got up, another slick. All the guns were last in line at the other end of the runway, no way they were getting up. One of the next ricky rifle rounds hit where we had been sitting, because the tail boom of the ship in front and the nose of the ship behind took hits.

We headed for those hills at the west end of the runway, spotted a muzzle flash, BonBon circled it, I swear I got a secondary but who knows, then I got excited and got a cookoff and almost shit, I remember ripping the glove off the wall and pulling the barrel in slo-mo and looking at the back of the round cooking off and thinking how dumb that was, jamming my spare in just waiting for the ground fire (we were low and close to that secondary) and making a couple more orbits then heading back to the runway. I don't know what that jackass gunner with the brand-new barrel was doing, who cares?

Somebody found us later on that day, said the 4th Div CO there wanted the guy who got that gun right now, he was going to hang some sort of medal on him. I disappeared and ended up at that big bunker right at the gate of the CIDG compound, so effed up I couldn't walk, puking on the sandbags.

The day went on from there, gawd knows what we ended up with, and we found out when we got back to Pleiku that Shifty was dead. I went back down to the swamp and there were a couple of assholes there taking a picture of his ship and what what left of him in it. I forget who was doing the cleanup. You know what happened to their effing camera.

Later that night DumDum (what a good guy he was)let me move him out of the way and I helped pack up Shifty's stuff. You probably remember that.

Bob